ABUJA— THE Senate yesterday hurried through a bill seeking to create a Petroleum Inspectorate Commission for the purpose of providing adequate supervision of the country’s petroleum industry. The bill sponsored by Senator David Brigidi received popular support in the Senate chambers upon observations of the incapacity of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to effectively monitor the production and exportation levels of oil producing companies.
Senators generally regretted that it was unfortunate that the country was being held hostage to the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the regulatory agencies in the oil sector, a development that gave the producing companies the leeway to do as they pleased. Senate Chief Whip, Senator Kassim Isa Oyofo, a former oil executive, lamented that oil producing companies were the ones that provided both technical and infrastructural facilities to the DPR for the purpose of monitoring them.
The bill, according to Senator Brigidi, aimed to sever the Petroleum Inspectorate Department out of the NNPC to form a new body with the DPR which would be carved out of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. "The bill is aimed at harmonising the monitoring, supervising and policing roles of the petroleum industry under a commission which will be independent and self-financing," Senator Brigidi said yesterday.
Lamenting the situation of the DPR as it is now, he said: "It is a sad commentary on our nation that many years after the discovery of oil and subsequent establishment of DPR, we depend on the various exploration and production companies for equipment and logistics to monitor, supervise and police our petroleum operations."
Support for the bill came from Senators Chris Adighije, himself a former oil worker, Abdul Azeez Ibrahim (PDP, Taraba), Isaiah Balat (PDP, Kaduna), Ewa Henshaw (PDP, Cross River) and Mamman Ali (ANPP, Yobe). In his contribution, Senator Ibrahim warned the Senate to expedite action on the bill, noting the capacity of the oil producing companies to sabotage the bill.
Recalling his time as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum in the last Senate, Senator Ibrahim said the present bill was frustrated by the oil companies who wanted the present laxity of the DPR to continue. "We have to note the political undercurrents to this bill. There are some people in this country who don’t want this bill to be passed," Ibrahim said.
